Icing on the cake

Batlava lake

By Maud Kuijpers

In all honestly, just before Peace Lab was about to begin, I was not feeling it. I had just sent in my capstone at 2 AM the night before, after months of hard work, and I just wanted to sleep. I did not feel like going to class at 2 PM and felt ungrateful for feeling that way, but I did, I was just exhausted. Still, just a bit before 2 PM I dragged myself to the academic building and sat in my chair with the attitude of someone who does not want to be there and was not looking to be proven wrong. But I think the moment our lecturer, Anne de Graaf, started talking, I was sold and ready and excited to go to Kosovo.

I feel as if Kosovo is the icing on the cake of my academic career at AUC. Because the thing is, you learn all these theories about peace building and security and human rights, and of course you follow the news, but you never really get the opportunity to study it from more up close and to visit these organizations which tell you about it. The highlight for me was the actual contact with people, not the official talk of organizations. It was talking to people who do not dare to cross the bridge in Mitrovica out of fear of being beaten up or worse, to students my age who cannot travel to other countries, to a woman who did everything in her capacity to get Roma children to school. It is one thing to learn things or to hear about it, but for people to actually tell you their truths, it is something entirely else. 

Tara and my project involved making a podcast called ‘About Anthems’ regarding the Kosovar national anthem. The podcast can be found on the following link on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-877562473/about-anthems.

Something which I personally did not realize before was that with state building also comes the institution of certain national markers, such as the anthem and the flag. It felt a bit artificial to me to just come up with an anthem, as I never thought about anthems that much and they just seemed to already exist somehow organically. For example, the ‘Wilhelmus’ in the Netherlands is one of the oldest national anthems that exists. It relates to Dutch history and to Willem of Orange, one of our heroes, and has done so for ages. 

Therefore, Tara and I were wondering whether people in Kosovo identify with the new official anthem that was decided upon in 2008 after a competition after the declaration of independence. It is called ‘Europe’ and does not have lyrics. We found that people’s opinions regarding the anthem seemed very much representative of the divisional aspect of the conflict, at least those were our insights on it, but we do not want to generalize. The Kosovar Albanians we spoke to seemed to acknowledge the anthem, if they knew it, but did rather identify with the Albanian anthem. And the Kosovar Serbs we talked to rather thought that Kosovo, or at least the part they lived in, was part of Serbia and therefore they did not really care about the Kosovar official anthem, but only about the Serbian one. Especially talking to students at the University of Pristina in Mitrovica surprised me in how strong they were opinionated. Of course I probably could have expected that, but after spending more time in Pristina your perspective on the whole situation also kind of shifts. Everyone seems kind of openminded and trying to move forward, and then you meet people with a whole different idea who see themselves as part of Serbia and do not want to be part of Kosovo. I think therefore it was very valuable to go to Mitrovica, as it is important to see both perspectives.

I think one of the things I am taking back from Kosovo is realizing my own privilege. Multiple times we heard the statement that Kosovo was a ‘captured state’, as people hardly can get any visas and thus not travel to or work in other countries. But the opportunities in Kosovo itself are also small as the unemployment rates are very high, making it difficult for people to live in Kosovo itself. Especially the freedom to travel is something I very much had taken for granted, but will not again. The drivers of our bus to the airport, who were joking with suitcase in hand as if they would also go travel and take a flight somewhere, made me pretty sad. Moreover, the kindness of strangers in Kosovo was something I had not expected, but made staying there so special and really makes me want to come back. 

I began Peace Lab as an exhausted student done with AUC, and ended it somehow at peace and ready to start my next adventure. Thank you Anne for this opportunity and thank you Peace Lab ’19 group, I did not expect to make new friends in my last weeks of AUC.